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Defense spending should be reviewed

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After reading the Friday letter “Cuts in defense would weaken our nation” from Karen Kendall,
what I find frightening is the ignorance about how money is spent. America is basically an
insurance company backed by a military, significantly overspending on both without getting its
money’s worth on either.

The United States no longer can afford to spend without limit on defense or medical care. No
government department should be given a blank check. All public- and private-sector efforts are
being pressed for more accountability.

We want to know what students learn in school in relation to what schools cost. We want to know
how well medical procedures work in relation to what they cost. We also need to know how well our
defense programs work.

In July 2011, Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s comptroller, told a panel of the Senate Armed Services
Committee that they shouldn't expect the Defense Department to be ready for a full financial audit
until 2017. This is an outrage. After a decade of steadily increasing the defense-base budgets on
top of war spending, the military has to start decreasing spending and be held accountable.

While the prospect of a reduction in military spending has raised voices shouting “disaster” or “
catastrophe,” the current proposed cuts would result in a defense budget drawdown of about 31
percent from the fiscal year 2010 peak to the fiscal year 2017 trough, resulting in a drawdown
below the historical range from 43 percent after the Korean War to 33 percent after the Vietnam
War.

This cut is significant to be sure, but it does not reach that of previous postwar budgets and
certainly should not be frightening, except to bloated defense contractors who have been wasting
our money.